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PANDA PROBLEMS (Victoria)

There was undoubtedly a great deal of PR spin surrounding the arrival of Sunshine and Sweetie to Edinburgh Zoo last December.
The deal was hailed as ‘a celebration of links between China and Scotland’ and as ‘a gift from China’ in official promotional materials.
The commercial nature of the deal was skimmed over by the Scottish government as they neglected to mention that the Panda’s were to cost the tax payer £60,000 a year in payments to the Chinese authorities for the next decade.
After a complaint by animal rights group, Scotland for Animals was made to the Advertising Standards Authority regarding the deceptive terms, it is expected to be upheld this week with the advert to be deemed ‘misleading’.
Despite record visitor numbers, it hasn’t exactly been smooth running for the Pandas with the project being blighted by illness, their failure to mate and fraud allegations.

http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/pandas-are-no-gift-says-watchdog.16919047

RECORD BREAKING BOUNCING (Emma)

Over 850 participants gathered in New Orleans last week in the hope of breaking the world record for human mattress domino-toppling.  Until today I had never even heard of human mattress dominoes, but apparently it’s more popular than you would expect!  The act involves falling backwards onto upright standing mattresses, one onto another. 
Guinness World Records said that each person had to “touch the one behind it” and that there needed to be “a consecutive chain of toppling mattresses”. 
The first record for the “sport” was set in 2009 on BBC’s Blue Peter, with 100 people. 
The New Orleans bunch were successful in breaking the previous world record of 550, which was set in Belgium in 2011. 
As it was confirmed that they had made a new world record, participants jumped for joy on top of their mattresses. 

You can watch the video of the bizarre event here –

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K13P3dfXSYM

THE INVISIBLE CAR (Laura)

Boffins at Mercedes Benz have managed to do what the world once thought was impossible and make a real life invisibility cloak – well kind of. In order to advertise the launch of its new F-Cell fuel hydrogen cell technology, which emits zero harmful fuel chemicals into the environment, the company employed scientists to make one of their cars appear as though it was invisible. The team covered a car in LED lights and mounted an SLR camera to the other side of the car which filmed the scene and transmitted it to then be screened by the LEDs in real time – giving the illusion that the car was invisible. The car was then driven around Germany for a week and the reactions of passers by were filmed.
It’s a fantastic idea which not only gets across the message that 0.0% means the car is invisible to the environment, but also showcases the technology and forward thinking of the Mercedes Benz team. The video has also had over 1 million views on YouTube so definitely worth checking out!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ZIGzpi9lCck

WHAT KILLED THIS RESTAURANT (Scott)

When a highly-rated and affordable restaurant went to the wall while its less impressive rivals flourished, fans of the eaterie were left wondering what had gone wrong. Here one of my favourite writers give a no-holds barred appraisal on how it became invisible in the digital age. There’s a lesson for virtually any sort of business in here (BTW – lots more excellent content at Christopher Penn’s Twitter account and the Marketing over Coffee podcast)

http://www.christopherspenn.com/2012/02/what-killed-this-restaurant/#.T1TD2X09VD4

NON SURGICAL GADGETS (Gaynor)

Every day women across the globe are trying the latest things that they think will help make them younger, whether that be the latest beauty cream or even cosmetic surgery. Now there seems to be non surgical alternatives to help you look younger that have hit Japan. These come  in the form a nose lifter and a mouthpiece to help keep your lips fuller for longer. If you don’t mind sitting with a big of plastic up your nose or in your mouth, these gadgets are the perfect way to keep your face looking younger for longer……Hmmm.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2110392/The-knife-nose-job-Bizarre-gadgets-claim-plump-lips-eradicate-wrinkles-REALLY-work.html